>The Exorcist (1973) : The movie starts with opening sequence filmed in the Iraqi town of Sinjar, just below the Syrian border.
The people of Sinjar are mostly Kurdish members of the ancient Yazidi sect
that apparently used to worship Shaytan .

Since years We are trying to get pictures of an archaelogical site where our friend Reza took them, most of them are immortalizing Pazuzu and other ancient god-demons of Assyrian Civilization .
Once We shall retrieve them you will notice it ,
meanwhile welcome to full resources about Pazuzu Myth.

>Original Report from Reza :

“Recently, I was talking with a friend about The Exorcist.
The opening scene shows an archeological dig site near Nienevah which originally means The City of Blood;
Iraqi workers exhuming (defiling) a mound and what they find is two contagious artifacts:
a figurine of Pazuzu (Evil against Evil) and a medallion of Mary and Jesus
which is amazingly at a wrong place (in a pre-Christian Assyrian City).
This exhumation cipher becomes the central riddle of the movie.
Yesterday, Iranian News broadcasted some interesting reports from Pasargad, the tomb of Cyrus,
the great (who spread Zoroastrian monotheism in Persia), nearly 200km away from Shiraz.
The archeologists have accidentally dug up a huge column holding a strange picture of an unknown deity:
a (wo)man with four wings (four wings entities are really rare in mythologies),
an Egyptian helmet, two markhor’s (an Asian wild goat) horns and two snakes
germinated on his head (a composition of Baphomet, Zahak,
Ashemogha and an Egyptian entity).
I’m trying to go there and take some photos as soon as possible. ”

The War in Iraq opened is making difficult any attempt safe to get also over iraqi borders ,
result : We have no pics yet ….since June 20 2004

“Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, Dark Angel of the Four Winds with rotting genitals from which he howls through sharpened teeth over stricken cities….”

William S. Burroughs, Cities of the Red Night

Pazuzu, a god or demon, was invoked to protect birthing mothers and infants against Lamashtu’s malevolence, usually on amulets and statues. Although Pazuzu was said to be bringer of famine and drought, he was also invoked against evil for protection, and against plague, but he was primarily and popularly invoked against his fierce, malicious, rival Lamashtu.

>Yazidi accounts of creation differ from that of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They believe that God first created Tawûsê Melek from his own illumination (Ronahî) and the other six archangels were created later. God ordered Tawûsê Melek not to bow to other beings. Then God created the other archangels and ordered them to bring him dust (Ax) from the Earth (Erd) and build the body of Adam. Then God gave life to Adam from his own breath and instructed all archangels to bow to Adam. The archangels obeyed except for Tawûsê Melek. In answer to God, Tawûsê Melek replied, “How can I submit to another being! I am from your illumination while Adam is made of dust.” Then God praised him and made him the leader of all angels and his deputy on the Earth. (This likely furthers what some see as a connection to the Islamic Shaytan, as according to the Quran he too refused to bow to Adam at God’s command, though in this case it is seen as being a sign of Shaytan’s sinful pride.) Hence the Yazidis believe that Tawûsê Melek is the representative of God on the face of the Earth, and comes down to the Earth on the first Wednesday of Nisan (April). Yazidis hold that God created Tawûsê Melek on this day, and celebrate it as New Year’s Day. Yazidis argue that the order to bow to Adam was only a test for Tawûsê Melek, since if God commands anything then it must happen. (Bibe, dibe). In other words, God could have made him submit to Adam, but gave Tawûsê Melek the choice as a test. They believe that their respect and praise for Tawûsê Melek is a way to acknowledge his majestic and sublime nature. This idea is called “Knowledge of the Sublime” (Zanista Ciwaniyê). Şêx Adî has observed the story of Tawûsê Melek and believed in him.[25]

One of the key creation beliefs held by Yazidis is that they are the descendants of Adam through his son Shehid bin Jer rather than Eve.[23] Yazidis believe that good and evil both exist in the mind and spirit of human beings. It depends on the humans, themselves, as to which they choose. In this process, their devotion to Tawûsê Melek is essential, since it was he who was given the same choice between good and evil by God, and chose the good.

The Yazidi holy books are claimed to be the Kitêba Cilwe (Book of Revelation) and the Mishefa Reş (Black Book). However, scholars generally agree that the manuscripts of both books published in 1911 and 1913 were forgeries written by non-Yazidis in response to Western travelers’ and scholars’ interest in the Yazidi religion; the material in them is consistent with authentic Yezidi traditions, however.[17] True texts of those names may have existed, but remain obscure. The real core texts of the religion that exist today are the hymns known as qawls; they have also been orally transmitted during most of their history, but are now being collected with the assent of the community, effectively transforming Yazidism into a scriptural religion.[17] The qawls are full of cryptic allusions and usually need to be accompanied by čirōks or ‘stories’ that explain their context.[17]

Two key and interrelated features of Yazidism are: a) a preoccupation with religious purity and b) a belief in metempsychosis. The first of these is expressed in the system of caste, the food laws, the traditional preferences for living in Yazidi communities, and the variety of taboos governing many aspects of life. The second is crucial; Yazidis traditionally believe that the Seven Holy Beings are periodically reincarnated in human form, called a koasasa.

A belief in the reincarnation of lesser Yazidi souls also exists. Like the Ahl-e Haqq, the Yazidis use the metaphor of a change of garment to describe the process, which they call kiras guhorîn in Yezidish (changing the garment). Alongside this, Yazidi mythology also includes descriptions of heaven and hell, with hell extinguished, and other traditions incorporating these ideas into a belief system that includes reincarnation.[23]

Holy Chermera

As a demiurge figure, Tawûsê Melek is often identified by orthodox Muslims as a Shaitan (Satan), a Muslim term denoting a devil or demon who deceives true believers. The Islamic tradition regarding the fall of “Shaitan” from Grace is in fact very similar to the Yazidi story of Malek Taus – that is, the Jinn who refused to submit to God by bowing to Adam is celebrated as Tawûsê Melek by Yazidis, but the Islamic version of the same story curses the same Jinn who refused to submit as becoming Satan.Thus, the Yazidi have been accused of devil worship , but this shame must be OVER because the DEMIURGE is a wide concept that identifies the dualism of a perfect creator that rules over an imperfect creation since old Greeks Philosophical Era .

The demon Pazuzu represented by this figurine stands like a human but has a scorpion’s body, feathered wings and legs, talons, and a lion-like face on both front and back. Pazuzu, the “king of the evil wind demons,” was not entirely unfriendly to mankind. As an enemy of the dreaded Lamashtu demon, bearer of sickness especially to women and children, Pazuzu is often portrayed on amulets used as protection in childbirth.

The mighty wind devil of the Assyrian and Babylonian wastelands can be considered as one of the most malevolent elemental forces in the world of mythology. As Pazuzu, this middle-eastern demon has reached popular attention in William Peter Blatty’s sensational novel, The Exorcist. The film this novel inspired brought the subject of demonic possession into common parlance, but it was left to the misunderstood, atmospheric sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic, directed by John Boorman, to represent the malefic powers of Pazuzu in an authentic, mythological context as a desert scavenger; bringer of desolation and plague. This was imaged effectively in the film as a vast locust swarm, heralding an apocalypse of starvation.

In his erudite book, The Domain of Devils, Eric Marple describes the wind demon as the most terrible of all demonic entities, having the power to spread loathsome diseases with his dry fiery breath. The demon has “for a head the almost fleshless skull of a dog”1 representing death, disease, and as the fleshless death’s head of the desert scavenger, starvation. Significantly, William Woods states in his History of the Devil: “… in Mesopotamia the horned demon, Pazuzu, rode on the wind and carried malaria…”2 thus emphasising the demon’s destructive role as “lord of fevers and plagues.” Perhaps relating Pazuzu to the devouring dragon, Typhon, “angel of the fatal winds”, equated with the disease Typhoid.

Another representation of the wind demon can be traced in the Old Testament, where the devil is described as a hairy black creature; a haunter of the desert wastelands.3

The idea of the wind devil as a desert creature may derive from the Egyptian concept of Set, the destroyer, most ancient of the gods, who was represented as a strange, dog-like animal, not unlike that scavenging denizen of the desert, the jackal. Kenneth Grant has called this manifestation of Set, Shugal “the desert fox symbolic of Set, the male half of the Beast 666.”4 the number of Shugal being 333. The “female” half of the Beast is Choronzon (333), another pestilential being – representing Chaos in all its latent or manifested aspects. Choronzon is said to have driven Aleister Crowley insane by his invocation of the entity in the North African desert.5 Representing the malaise of chaos and destruction Choronzon is probably one of the most complex symbols in western occultism.

Interestingly, in relating Pazuzu to the concept of the Beast, we find his number is 107. Kenneth Grant states that this number is the number of the angel of Leo, OVAL, the messenger of the Beast.6 Oval literally means “egg”, and therefore refers to the aeon of the “daughter”, or the aeon of Set, which is still in embryonic form. In many of the world’s ancient theologies, this final aeon is the era of destruction, when the messenger of the Beast, Pazuzu, delivers his word: the howl of pestilential desert wind. The ancients may have recognised this word as the dread “great dragon”: ATEM, whose number is 440; it is also the number of “to annihilate”: “cease”, “disappear”, and, significantly, “complete”, which may refer to the ending of the cycle, as ATEM is also the goddess of periodicity, identical to the terrible Hindu goddess, Kali the destroyer. It is also interesting to note that 107+333=440. This formula may represent the ultimate blast of devastating wind from the mouth of the “great dragon”, ATEM, the Beast of the Apocalypse.

In relating these concepts to the ancient middle-eastern demon of the South-West Wind, we can understand why this symbol was regarded with such awe and terror. As the most ruthlessly destructive demon of the pantheon of nefarious beings, the wind devil represents the destruction of human life itself.